They were married at Florence, and on that occasion Horace Walpole condoles with Sir Horace Mann on the prospect, as he would lose so much of the society of his great friend, Lord Cowper. Both Lady Cowper and her husband were in high favour at the Grand-Ducal Court of Tuscany, and the former was a great ornament of the brilliant (but by no means straight-laced) society of the day. Miss Berry speaks in very high terms of Miss Gore, who resided with her married sister. Three sons were born to the Cowpers in Florence. In her later days the Countess took up her abode at a villa a little way out of the city. She survived her husband many years, and was said to have been plundered by her servants. Indeed, this most interesting picture is supposed to have been stolen at the time of her death. It was purchased in 1845 by the Honourable Spencer Cowper (for the trifling sum of £20), who made it a present to his brother, the sixth Earl.
KATRINE CECILIA COMPTON, WIFE OF THE PRESENT EARL COWPER.
The eldest daughter of William, present and fourth Marquis of Northampton. Married in 1870 to the present and seventh Earl Cowper.
THE HONOURABLE WILLIAM LAMB, AFTERWARDS SECOND VISCOUNT MELBOURNE.
_As a youth. Black coat trimmed with fur._
WILLIAM, second Lord Melbourne, was born March 15, 1779. His father and mother were friends of the Prince of Wales, and lived in that brilliant Whig circle of which Fox and Sheridan were the political ornaments, and the Duchess of Devonshire the Queen of Beauty. It is difficult now to realise the spirit of that society, in which dissipation and intellectual refinement were so singularly combined. Drunkenness among the men was too frequent to be considered disgraceful, and even those who passed for being sober took their two or three bottles a day. Conversation was habitually interlarded with oaths; gambling, to such an extent as to cripple the largest fortunes, was the common amusement of both sexes; and morality in other respects was in a low state. But joined with this there was that high sense of personal honour, which in England, and still oftener in France, has, at other times, been united with similar manners. There was more than this. There was a spirit of justice and generosity—even of tenderness—and in some cases a delicacy of feeling which we are accustomed now to associate only with temperance and purity. There was also a very cultivated taste, derived from a far more extensive knowledge of the Classics than is to be found in these days; a love of poetry and history; and, above all, an enthusiastic worship of liberty.